Vijay Singh and Golf’s Deer-Antler Mess

Vijay Singh’s lawsuit against the P.G.A. Tour, filed Wednesday, before the start of The Players Championship, the tour’s shiniest, richest event, states that for the past twelve weeks Singh has been the victim of a smear campaign. The tour, his suit claims, has dragged his name through the mud, exposing him to “public humiliation and ridicule” after his admission to Sports Illustrated that he used a spray, made from deer antlers, that briefly appeared on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned-substance list. Absent its own list, the tour relied on W.A.D.A.’s, Singh’s suit claims. Once W.A.D.A. determined the spray wasn’t potent enough to warrant banned status, they delisted it; subsequently, the tour dropped its investigation into Singh. He was free to play. But, days after getting the green flag, Singh sued. John Daly said doing so was a bad idea. Adam Scott, this year’s Masters Tournament champion, said a good amount of nothing. (“Overall, these situations should be managed to be avoided.”) Tim Finchem, the commissioner of the P.G.A. Tour, doesn’t yet have an opinion, at least not publicly: the tour says Finchem is waiting to see Singh’s lawsuit in its entirety before commenting.

Deer-antler spray was big news once already this year: in a long article published just before the Super Bowl, Sports Illustrated reported that the Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis may have used the spray, which contains a growth hormone banned by the N.F.L. (though users might not actually absorb any of it, as experts say the hormone can only be effectively delivered by injection), in the hope that it would accelerate his recovery time after he tore a triceps mid-season. Lewis returned to action just a few months after he was injured, in time for the playoffs and much sooner than expected for that sort of ailment. Mitch Ross, the owner of an alternative sports-therapy clinic, claimed that Lewis had purchased deer-antler spray from him, and that his accelerated rehabilitation was due in part to his use of it. (Lewis, who retired at the end of the season, strongly denies this.)

Within that same Sports Illustrated article, Singh, who’s won some sixty-seven million dollars on the P.G.A. Tour in the course of a long, workmanlike career, admitted to antlering up. He was using the spray “every day,” Singh told S.I. “I’m looking forward to some change in my body,” he said. “It’s really hard to feel the difference if you’re only doing it for a couple of months.” The “difference” Singh mentioned could be any number of supposed health benefits, none of which have been proven by a reputable source: increased muscle mass and strength, decreased body fat, better circulation, and more radiant skin.

Out on tour, Singh, apparently, is nobody’s favorite. Once Finchem and company learned Singh had used deer-antler spray, they went after him aggressively—first with an investigation into his use of the substance, and later with the threat of suspension. Winnings earned during the investigation were held in escrow. All the while, Singh’s colleagues didn’t exactly rush to defend his reputation. (Singh, a twenty-year P.G.A. Tour veteran, is a three-time major champion.) What’s more, plenty of sports reporters were quick to remind us that Singh was banned from the Asian Tour, in 1985, for doctoring his scorecard. The “Cheatin’ Fijian,” an unfortunate epithet Singh picked up after the scorecard scandal, began to circulate again.

Ever proud of its unique position in the professional sports world, the tour has been slow to acknowledge that any of its gentlemen members could ever be tempted to use performance-enhancing drugs. Unlike in baseball or football, superhuman strength does not give one an outsize advantage on the links. No amount of freakish muscle mass will help you make an eight-foot putt. This has long been the tour’s position. (It’s shared, perhaps unironically, by Barry Bonds, who once said, “I don’t know if steroids are going to help you in baseball. I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe steroids can help eye-hand coördination.”)

Lately, though, the tour has looked eager to catch up to the rest of the sports world in terms of doling out punishment for banned substances. Since 2008, when drug testing began on tour, only Doug Barron, a relative unknown, has been suspended for testing positive for banned substances. Making an example out of notable players would send the message that the tour is serious about policing substance use. A ham-handed effort that depends on someone else’s standards, however, is a different story, especially when the substance in question is essentially hokum. And in this case the tour’s investigation lasted about ninety days—shorter than the lifespan of a trophy set of antlers.

Photograph by Andrew Redington/Getty.

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